"Getting PR in your town: Realities to remember" Published by Sharon Dotson Submitted: 28 May,2005 In business, getting effective media coverage is often crucial to success. Doesn’t matter how good you are if they don’t know you’re out there. But, there are realities to remember about the media, wherever you do business. Some of them are: • There is a risk to all PR. Getting media coverage is a gamble. Unlike advertising, you don’t pay for public relations. Of course, that’s what makes great media coverage so sweet. It amounts to a positive third-party endorsement of you with the credibility that paid advertising can never have. When a business owner works hard to get a reporter’s attention and that effort translates into a positive, enthusiastic story – almost nothing feels better. But the reality is: Just as much effort can be put into securing media coverage for a story that, unfortunately, may never materialize. There are a thousand reasons why the media doesn’t pick up on a perfectly good story, but timing and luck is a factor, even when all the best efforts are made. • The media market you live in can determine how much and what kind of media coverage you can get. For example, I live and work in Houston – the fourth largest city in the United States. This can be fortunate or unfortunate. What makes Houston the energetic, vibrant place it is, is also the reason there is fierce competition for media coverage here. Business people who live in small to mid-sized markets like Baton Rouge, Syracuse, Santa Fe, and Mobile, can enjoy a whole different kind of relationship with the local media. Here, reporters and writers are likely to have children in the same schools as your kids. Their wives and husbands may work in the same place where you or your spouse works. Smaller market media-types are likely to live in your neighborhood or go to your church. Lots of good stories develop out of personal relationships that just are not possible to develop in a huge city like Houston or Boston or Philadelphia. Of course, it works both ways. Business owners who live in small markets are also limited to a fraction of the potential customers available to you in a big city. What can you do about these public relations/media truths? • Work smarter to get media coverage. Look at your business objectively through the eyes of a reporter and decide what could be the most newsworthy story about your company. This takes practice and you can hone this skill by reading some of the hundreds of books available on the media. Just go to Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com and key in the words “public relations.” You’ll be amazed at what comes up. • Learn to read your newspaper with the eyes of a media pro. Familiarize yourself with the names and styles of reporters who regularly write about topics where news about your business might fit in. Remember, most reporters have “beats,” which means they are basically writing about the same topics over and over. You won’t see many automotive columnists writing pharmaceutical stories. • Adjust any negative, self-defeating attitudes you might be harboring about coverage in small community newspapers. All the time, I hear people say they don’t want to waste their time pursuing media coverage in small newspapers. “Nobody reads them,” they say. But, this is wrong! As Richard Laermer, the powerhouse PR exec says in his book, Full Frontal PR: “The big secret is that most journalists read the small news outlets to find great stories before they hit the mainsteam. Do you think,” asks Laermer, “that these reporters dream up all those stories on their own?” In fact, community journalism is big business in cities and towns all over the country. The best evidence is the sky-high cost of advertising in these newspapers. It isn’t cheap – which is a sure sign that people are reading these newspapers. Getting media coverage is not a snap, but it is far from impossible, if you deal with the realities and go from there. About the Author Sharon Dotson owns Houston's Bayou City Public Relations (www.bayoucitypr.com), a firm that specializes in getting positive news coverage for successful small companies. The firm's clients have seen coverage in USA Today, Inc.,Entrepreneur,Seventeen and Boys' Life.In 2003 and 2004, Bayou City PR won first place awards in media placement from the Public Relations Society of America and the International Assoc. of Business Communicators.